A New Muscular Catholicism?

Alevo recently sent me an article about the Pope’s opposition to the Harry Potter novels. In March 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed reservations about the books in a letter written to Gabriele Kuby, a woman who wrote a German book whose title translates to Harry Potter- good or evil? According to the article, her criticism centers on the idea that “the Potter books corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy”.

Criticism of children’s literature with fantastical themes by religious authorities – because of content ranging from witchcraft to magic to perceived Satanism – is nothing new. What I found interesting about this article is how it relates to something I read a few weeks ago in a book called 100 Banned Books*. 100 Banned Books is about censorship, and in a section entitled “Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds”, Cardinal Ratzinger – now the Pope – makes an appearance.

In 1981, the book Church: Charism and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church by Leonardo Boff was published. Boff is a Brazilian Catholic theologian who “is among the leading proponents of liberation theology, an interpretation of Christian faith drawn from the experience of the poor”. His book, based on his experiences in poor Brazilian communities, contains “some of the sharpest criticisms of the Roman Catholic church to come from Latin America”.

He criticizes the church as having a feudal structure based on its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and recommends that the church “move away from its reliance on power and coercion and toward a democratic model of openness and tolerance”.

By 1982, Cardinal Ratzinger was on the case, writing Boff a letter of criticism and asking for a response, Boff complied and published it. In May 1984, he received a six-page letter from Ratzinger that said his views “did not merit acceptance”, accused him of “ecclesiastical relativism”, slammed his language as “polemic, defamatory and pamphleteering, absolutely inappropriate for a theologian” inspired by “ideological principles of a certain neo-Marxist inspiration”. Boff was proposing a “revolutionary utopia” which was “foreign to the church”, according to the man who is now Pope.

Boff defended himself with a 50-page rebuttal, to no avail, and in 1985 received an official notice to observe an “obedient silence” so he could have “time for serious reflection”. This notice required him to cease writing, publishing, teaching, lecturing and fulfilling his editorial duties at the Revista Ecclesiastica Brasileira, a major religious publication in Brazil, for an unspecified amount of time. Boff submitted to the censorship “as a Christian” ought to, but according to Wikipedia, he left the Franciscan Order in 1992 after being “silenced again”.

The Catholic Church has been showing an increased willingness to influence governments and electorates. Witness its unsuccessful but vigorous attempts to stop same-sex marriage legislation in Spain and here in Canada, even after the fact: Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet has supported Bishop Ronald Fabbro after he barred NDP MP Joe Comartin from taking part in his church duties, including church marital classes, because he supported equal marriage rights for gays.

Is the growing muscularity of the Catholic Church rooted in concerns that it is losing its relevance and influence, or is something a little more medieval happening here? The Pope has a censorship history that includes the silencing of a Catholic advocate of social justice in the church. That’s worth keeping in mind as the Catholic Church seeks to expand its political and social influence.

* Karolides, Nicholas J., Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Soya. 100 Banned Books. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999. 194-197.